By Geraldine Connolly
Once I rode a one-eyed horse
To a tree house in the forest.
Once I was a child spreading
Tomorrow’s clean clothes
Over the back of a chair.
I greeted three pheasants at dawn
Escaping the mist of a cold river.
Once the minutes flew like hummingbirds
Buzzing over speedwell.
I floated in a wood canoe through
Mill town haze and green banks.
Once she was breathing in my sleep,
Kicking the flesh under my breastbone.
Once the waves rose high and cold,
The smoky silt stung my skin.
What was beneath terrified me
And my dreams made me swoon —
Swollen grandmothers rising,
Balloons into limbo, the part
That dragged, the part that lifted.
Did I count my sins?
Did I sin?
I counted my breaths, I counted my steps.
I numbered the days toward escape.
I burned candles for the lives
I had not lived.
The wind was always blowing me backward,
Interring my course until I deflected.
Childhood passed.
I became feathers swiveling,
Always the gravity escaping, eluding,
Memory the weight of stones.
Now I explode into the unknown,
Restless, on fire with fast air.
The air divides as I pull up to climb,
To turn and tilt, to stay aloft.
Geraldine Connolly is the author of three poetry collections, Food for the Winter, Province of Fire, and Hand of the Wind. Her poems and articles have appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, The Gettysburg Review, and The Cortland Review. She has been awarded two NEA fellowships, a Maryland Arts Council Fellowship, and the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize. She has taught at the Writers Center in Bethesda, the Chautauqua Institute, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. She divides her time between Montana and Arizona.
